Remind Me of Swimming
by UnabashedBird
Summary: Daniel Jackson plays the piano. Except when he doesn't.


A/N: A couple of weeks ago I was rewatching part of "The Light" and noticed something very important: DANIEL JACKSON OWNS A PIANO.

So naturally I immediately started thinking about the implications of this, and then yesterday I was talking to Chocolatequeen about it, and she said sad things, and then I rubbed my hands together with evil fangirl glee and wrote this.

The title is a line from the Florence + the Machine song "Swimming." The full lyric is "Your songs remind me of swimming/which I forgot when I started to sink."

* * *

It was his mom's piano. He loved to watch her play, her fingers flowing over the keys. She'd play complex jazz or classical pieces, and simpler pieces meant as accompaniment for the Dutch folk songs and lullabys she learned from her parents and grandparents-with those she sang as she played.

She'd been teaching him for three years when the accident happened. The piano went into storage with everything else he'd technically inherited, and he went into the foster system. Some of the homes had pianos or keyboards, so he could practice what he already knew, but none had money for lessons.

His love of stories meant he was almost accidentally friends with the theatre kids in high school, which made him tangentially friends with the choir kids, which got him on the radar of the teachers in the performing arts department. He was never sure which of them caught him plucking hesitantly at the keys in the choir room while waiting for his friends to get out of play practice, but someone started slipping just the right level of sheet music into his locker.

In college he allowed himself the indulgence of lessons as an elective. It was strange, the way the collegiate atmosphere made him feel closer to his parents than he ever had before, while also making him miss them so much it was like a physical ache. Sometimes it hurt so much he couldn't play the piano and could barely do his homework, other times the only way he could possibly cope with the hurt was to play and study.

It was in grad school that he finally got the piano out of storage. He has his own place, one he knew he'd have for several years, so it's worth the hassle of moving the piano. So, so worth it.

It was a private thing, his playing. Something he did for himself, and to reach across the void to the parents he hoped would be proud of him if they'd lived. He played to relax and to recharge, to concentrate on something, anything else when he wants to set his thesis, or later whatever article he's writing, on fire.

He played for Sarah, during those brief months where she thought she could change him and he thought he could be changed, could be someone not completely consumed with his work. She sat next to him on the bench and watched his hands flow over the keys and teased him about what an accomplished regency lady he'd make, and he teased her back about being his far-too-forward gentleman suitor, sitting right next to him like that.

Those were good days.

He played after the break-up, too. Not the same songs, but still he played, and it helped, just like it helped when he was writing his thesis and then his increasingly-controversial papers.

He saw the writing on the wall in time to put the piano back in storage before he was evicted from his apartment. Before Catherine found him and offered him a strange new job in Colorado Springs, and he accepted because he was curious and out of options, but mostly because he was curious.

The Abydonians didn't have any instruments that even remotely resembled the piano. He described it to Sha're as well as he could, hummed some of his favorite songs to the best of his ability, and taught her Dutch folk songs and lullabies in exchange for the Abydonian ones she taught him.

Moving back into an apartment after Sha're was taken, he wouldn't have thought he'd be able to play. But the simultaneous familiarity and strangeness of a modern American apartment, full of his possessions but empty of everything and every _one_ he'd come to value most, and most of all the silence and the emptiness, was more than he could stand.

Those first few weeks, he barely slept. It was too silent, and too warm. Abydonian nights were always cold, which made the literal and figurative warmth of their communal culture that much more welcome; he and Sha're wrapped around each other every night that much more welcome. He never knew that heat could be so much lonelier than cold, but here, without her and without the people who welcomed him with such open arms, the night's heat was the loneliest thing he can imagine, and he could not sleep. Instead, he played. First he regained his familiarity with the pieces he'd known for years. Then, slowly, trying to fill the lonely silence of the apartment, he began to pick out Abydonian melodies.

When he felt too hopeless, like when they had to destroy Thor's Hammer, or, worse, when he felt the pull of his curiosity, of the work itself, threaten to subsume his drive to find Sha're, like when he tried to stay on the planet where Ernest was trapped, he would play those songs, filling the emptiness and silence with the reminder of what he'd lost, but still fought to regain.

It was Sam who asked about the piano, after the incident with Nem. He told her some of it: that it was his mom's, that she'd taught him to play, that it was just something he did for himself. She nodded in understanding and told him about how she fixed up motorcycles, and he knew then that she'd left just as much unsaid as he had. Looking back, he thinks that conversation might be when she, for all intents and purposes, became his sister.

After their experience in that god-awful machine, when Sam found out what happened to his parents, she told him about her mom. He knew what she was doing, offering him something personal to level the playing field. She didn't have to- _she_ wasn't the one who pulled out one of his worst memories and forced him to relive it as some twisted spectator sport-but he's grateful that she did. He told her what he left out when she first asked about the piano. She told him what she didn't say when she told him about fixing up motorcycles.

Once an addict, always an addict, he learned the hard way. Playing, he found, soothed the uncomfortable pull he felt at the edges of himself some nights, grounded him when his thoughts ran too wild with unhealthy ideas of how to get back in a sarcophagus.

When he returned from Abydos, from finding Sha're only to lose her again, the full force of what was done to her, was still being done to her, and his inability to stop it, hit him, and the prospect of going "home" to his empty apartment was just too much. Jack dragged Daniel to his place, made up the couch, and handed Daniel a beer; Daniel was reminded that sometimes _not_ saying anything is the greatest gift one person can give another.

He couldn't bring himself to play anything but the approximations of Abydonian melodies he'd taught himself for several months after that.

In one of the visions Sha're created for him in those stretched-out moments when Amaunet was killing him and Teal'c was making the terrible decision to save him, one of the ones where they saved her and she joined him on Earth, he played for her. It wasn't until after it was over, after he watched her die so he could live and was trying to accept it because she had accepted it, that he realized why she had cried in the dream.

After that, he didn't play again, _couldn't_ play again, for more than a year.

And when he finally did, it was after Sarah was taken, and it felt more like penance than the relief it once was. Sam noticed that there was no longer a precarious stack of books on the chair in front of the piano the next time he hosted team dinner.

"Are you playing again?" she asked. It was the first time she mentioned it, and with that simple sentence she told him that she'd paid attention, and had at least some understanding of what it meant.

"Not really. Maybe a little. I don't know," he told her.

He tried to play after he met Shifu. Sha're's son. But was he, really? She'd never referred to him as such, in the dreams. Always "the boy," "the child." He wondered, then, just what it had cost her to care so much, to work as hard as she did to ensure Shifu's salvation. Thought's of Sha're and the life she got, and how different it was from the life she deserved, stilled his hands on the keys. He got up and moved to a different seat, not wanting his tears to stain the piano.

Mostly he was either too busy or too exhausted to play. So much was happening out in the galaxy, and SG-1 was always in the middle of it.

Nick came back for a visit, and Daniel had him over for dinner. His grandfather noticed the piano right away. Well, of course he did, Daniel reflected, after all it had been Daniel's mother's. Nick's daughter's. And for the first time, Daniel wondered if Nick was as bad off when Claire died as Jack was when Charlie did. Because Daniel had _seen_ Jack, seen how hopeless he felt, how willing he was to throw himself away because the grief was too much. Daniel had lost his parents; Nick had lost his _daughter_. Maybe that was part of the reason he'd been so willing to leave Daniel to the system and bury himself in his work—it was a reaction Daniel understood. Suddenly, without having to get confirmation of any of it, Daniel felt closer to his grandfather than he ever had in his life.

"Do you play?" Nick asked softly.

"Not much anymore," Daniel admitted. "Would you like—"

"No, no, I don't think that would be the best idea. Food, drink, and talk, that's the stuff for us."

"Especially the talk," Daniel said, smiling, following Nick's lead in trying to lighten the mood. Nick clapped him on the shoulder.

Later, after Nick left, Daniel played all the Dutch songs he knew until late into the night.

After Kelowna, one way or another, he never expected to play again.

He played a lot after retaking human form. It helped with his memories. When he played he could almost feel old connections and pathways slotting back into place, like a bike shifting into gear. Playing made all the little things fit, made him feel more properly at home in his own new-old life. And it smoothed the raw edges of his ever-present frustration that the knowledge of his time on another plane hovered beyond his reach, his memories taken for reasons he, without them, cannot understand.

They saved Sarah, and, at her request, he spent a lot of time with her as she recovered. She came over for dinner and when he saw her eyeing the piano, he impulsively asked if she wanted him to play. He was rewarded with a smile, a genuine smile, and a nod. It was a nice evening, and he was glad to have regained Sarah's friendship; he thought there was even hope that time spent with her wouldn't always be tinged with sadness and regret and what-ifs.

Janet died, a stray staff blast that would've hit him if they lived in a just universe, but he knew better than most that they didn't. Janet died, and it's a different kind of tragedy than its predecessors. She died doing her job, knowing full well the hazards of going onto a battlefield in a heroic attempt to save the wounded. It wasn't a freak accident or murder-by-proxy, it was a risk of her job, one she took open-eyed.

He'd still like the list of people he cares about who have died in front of him to stop getting longer.

He still thought the universe would be better off if the staff blast had hit him.

Daniel was overwhelmed by the urge to play the piano, but he feared that if he started, he wouldn't be able to stop. He wondered if there was anything any of them could possibly say to Cassie, who had lost her mother for the second time in her young life.

He gave in and sat at the piano, but once he did he found he had no inspiration, no desire to play any particular piece.

"It's open," he called in response to a knock at his door.

Cassie entered and, before he could get up, pulled up a chair next to him and without a word started playing the low part of "Heart and Soul." He played the high part.

Daniel couldn't have said how long they sat and played, the same repetitious notes over and over and over.

"It sucks," Cassie said when they stopped.

"Yeah," Daniel agreed.

"People keep trying to feed me. Why do people keep trying to feed me?"

"Because you have to eat, even though eating feels pointless and unpleasant right now. And because they don't know what to say."

"Are you going to try to feed me?"

"No. But I am going to make food, and then I'm going to eat it, even though that all sounds pointless and unpleasant. There will, coincidentally, be enough for two people by the time I'm done, and misery does love company."

"Whatever." Then, after a pause, "Daniel?"

"Yeah?"

"This sucks."

"Yes. Yes it does."

They stood up from the piano, and Cassie turned and threw her arms around him, and he held her close as she cried.

He played only sporadically for the next year and a half or so. It had been years since he'd learned any new pieces, and he felt no motivation to change that. He began to feel that the Daniel who played consistently, learning new songs and even, occasionally, attempting a bit of composing himself, was only vaguely connected to who he was now. That Daniel hadn't seen what he'd seen, been through what he'd been through.

Almost absentmindedly, he began to play "Heart and Soul," then snorted softly to himself. Heart and soul. He wasn't sure what lived in his heart and soul these days, but he suspected it was much less musical than it used to be.

"What's this?" Vala asked, startling slightly when she poked a key; apparently she hadn't expected it to make noise.

"A piano. It's a musical instrument," Daniel told her shortly. He'd needed some things from his apartment, and the damn bracelets meant she had to come with him to collect them.

"Why do you have it?"

"Because it doubles as a place to keep books and a conversation piece," he answered, voice dripping with sarcasm.

" _You_ play a musical instrument." The statement was so laden with disbelief it might as well have been a question.

"Yes."

"Prove it."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I play for me, not for other people."

"Oh."

She said nothing more as he finished gathering his stuff, thoughtfully pressing different keys.

"You're full of surprises, you know that?" she told him as they left the apartment.

"Am I?"

"Music. I just wouldn't have thought . . . well, it doesn't matter. Are there recordings? Of what a . . . piano?" She looked at him, eyebrows raised questioningly, and he nodded confirmation that she'd gotten it right. "Of what a piano sounds like, when someone who knows how plays it?"

He blinked. "Um, yeah. Yeah, there are. I could, uh, get you some CDs?"

"Yes, I'd like that, thank you."

"Huh. Who's full of surprises now?"

Vala was so quiet and devastated after the plague planet. He told himself that was what made him do it. "Come on," he said. "You need to get off the base for a while."

He took her to his apartment, made her a cup of tea, sat down at the piano, and played.

Daniel insisted on hosting the first team night after Vala officially joined SG-1.

Sam joined him where he was bustling around his kitchen. "Are you playing again?" she murmured, sliding her eyes towards the piano.

He glanced at it. He'd moved the clutter of books and paper that had accumulated on top of it over the years; now all that was there was stacks of music, some old, some that he'd recently purchased. He hadn't really thought about what a change it was; it was just something that, for the first time in a long time, felt right.

"Yeah, actually, I am."

Sam grinned. "When did that happen?"

Daniel blinked, trying to think of exactly when the impulse to dive back into playing took hold. He had just realized, with a great deal of consternation, what the timeline was and what Sam would probably make of it, and was trying to come up with a way to answer her question that _wouldn't_ lead to assumptions on her part, when piano music drifted in from the living room.

They both turned. Vala was sitting at the instrument, a very old beginners book open in front of her, carefully fingering her way through one of the pieces.

Sam looked at Daniel, eyebrows raised, eyes sparkling, lips not-quite-but-very-nearly smirking.

"What?" he said defensively. "She asked if I'd teach her."

"Uh huh," Sam said, and, much to Daniel's relief, left it at that.

So what if Vala's (physically) safe return from the Ori galaxy coincided with him beginning to play again? Correlation was not causation.

And so what if the evenings when Vala came over and he played and she practiced were some of his favorites?

It was just piano playing, after all.


End file.
